Child of the Earth and stars, Jodahs can shapeshift, heal the maimed, cure cancer, create contagion with every breath, or mutate the ground with a touch. Jodahs is an ooloi, a being beyond gender, born with the alien Oankali power to mix pure DNA within its body. But the child is also the first ooloi born to a human mother, and its destiny is unknown. The futures of both humans and Oankali rest in one young being's successful metamorphosis into adulthood.
Jodahs can become a mad, living plague – or a bridge of peace. Its challenge is to reconcile its galactic heritage of gene trading with the rage of a people facing a terrifying dilemma. For human children will inherit the universe only if they lose all that makes them human.
Octavia Estelle Butler (1947–2006) was an American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the few African-American women in the field. She won both Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant.
